Raytheon Employee Illegally Kept Classified National Defense Info

WALTHAM, MA — A former Raytheon systems engineer was sentenced July 22 for "illegally retaining" national defense information. The Sharon man had in his possession 31,000 pages of classified information, some of which pertained to U.S. missile defense and was classified at the "secret" level.

U.S. District Court Judge sentenced Ahmedelhadi Yassin Serageldin, 67, of Sharon, to 18 months in prison, one year of supervised release and he will have to pay a fine of $10,000.

In December, Serageldin pleaded guilty to one count of willfully retaining national defense information.

Serageldin was a systems engineer at Raytheon Technologies in Waltham from August 1997 until he was fired in May 2017. Serageldin had a "secret" level security clearance in order to complete his assignments on several defense contracts for the U.S. government involving military radar technology.

During an internal investigation into possible time card fraud, Raytheon officials found that Serageldin had downloaded hundreds of documents onto an external hard drive in violation of Raytheon's security and document control policies. Raytheon said he delayed their investigation and claimed he had authority to work at home when he did not. They raised suspicions to federal authorities about whether Serageldin was being candid about his computer usage, agents followed Serageldin to a library where they discovered that he was researching how to delete files from his computer.

After getting a search warrant, authorities said they found more than 3,100 electronic files and some 110 paper documents belonging to Raytheon or the Department of Defense, more than 570 — or 31,000 pages —of which were marked as containing classified information. A number of those were on his personal computer, and an external drive that were not Raytheon property.

Court documents list five specific documents, all of which pertain to U.S. military programs involving missile defense and are classified at the "secret level." Investigators also said Serageldin had altered or deleted the classification markings on another 50 documents.

United States Attorney Andrew E. Lelling, the Justice Department’s National Security Division, the Boston division of the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service lead the investigation into the mishandling of classified information.